Around 2010, Jalo began working with a Danish engineering firm to develop a pellet production plant unlike anything on the market. The raw material would not be premium wood or roundwood chips, but landscape wood waste — the biomass that others ignore.

Over several years of intensive R&D with German specialists Maier Dieffenbacher, Jalo made a critical discovery: the finest wood fractions carry the highest ash content — and ash is precisely what limits pellet quality. By removing those fractions and refining the remainder, Jalo could produce top-grade pellets from raw materials that competitors cannot touch.

The process was validated in a pilot project in South Africa, patented in 2015, and followed by three more years of benchmarking every major wood-processing technology in Europe. The final production line was independently reviewed and confirmed as fully functional.

Becoming Carbon Negative

Producing clean energy was never enough. Around 2018, Jalo asked a harder question: what if we could not just replace fossil fuels, but actively remove carbon from the atmosphere?

The company began developing carbon capture technology for its boilers — and eventually for the industrial sites burning its pellets. The initial concept of using captured CO₂ in greenhouses evolved into a more powerful solution: permanent geological storage. Through dedicated infrastructure, the CO₂ is locked away for good.

This makes Jalo a genuinely carbon-negative operation. It does not simply offset emissions — it physically removes CO₂ from the carbon cycle. And because the feedstock regrows every year, it removes more carbon year after year.

The timing aligned with Europe’s first CO₂ storage infrastructure projects, including Northern Lights and Aramis. This enables a model where Jalo is not just a sustainable energy producer, but a verified, permanent carbon sink.